Anonymous wrote:11 YO DD is having a bday party next weekend with 9 girls. Today she asked if 3 could sleepover. I'm thinking it's rude to only invite a subset to stay overnight. DD doesn't agree and says that the girls staying overnight won't say anything and will keep it to themselves. She nor I want all of them to stay over. What do you think?

I think it's very sad you need to ask the question.it's your DD's bday, and she has an idea...give it a try.

If it works fine, she can do the same another year.

If it doesn't, at least you've proven to be on her side, instead of some random DCUMers or dumb rules.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, it happens all the time with my kids. They will have a big party and then only invite 3-5 for a sleepover. No one bats an eye because it is so common. My daughter usually gets invited to the sleepovers (she's not allowed) so she stays until 11 and I pick her up then. But there have been a couple of occasions when she is friends with the birthday girl, but not one of her best friends so she hasn't been invited to the sleepover. She's fine with that also. My son has reached the age we allow sleepovers, so he stays for the ones when he is invited to stay or I pick up after the party when the party is not from one of his best friends. I think the problem would be when the best friends are a group of 5 and one of them is not invited. But you as the parent must know why your child's best friends are (and so do all their classmates).

Just because it is common doesn't mean there aren't hurt feelings. When did it become so ok to be an asshole?

When did it become "everyone is close friends with everyone"? Wait, I know. It came with participation trophies.

Then have a party with only the three close friends that will be invited to the sleepover. Problem solved.

No problem to solve if you don't create a problem out of nothing. We are not raising drama queens.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, it happens all the time with my kids. They will have a big party and then only invite 3-5 for a sleepover. No one bats an eye because it is so common. My daughter usually gets invited to the sleepovers (she's not allowed) so she stays until 11 and I pick her up then. But there have been a couple of occasions when she is friends with the birthday girl, but not one of her best friends so she hasn't been invited to the sleepover. She's fine with that also. My son has reached the age we allow sleepovers, so he stays for the ones when he is invited to stay or I pick up after the party when the party is not from one of his best friends. I think the problem would be when the best friends are a group of 5 and one of them is not invited. But you as the parent must know why your child's best friends are (and so do all their classmates).

Just because it is common doesn't mean there aren't hurt feelings. When did it become so ok to be an asshole?

When did it become "everyone is close friends with everyone"? Wait, I know. It came with participation trophies.

Then have a party with only the three close friends that will be invited to the sleepover. Problem solved.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some say your daughter will be inviting people to her wedding but saying she doesn't have room for them to attend the reception afterwards that is only for "real" guests.

There are plenty of weddings with specific rules who attends what. I loved the one my friend did: a.m. ceremony for everyone (Catholic), a bus to load all the relatives to the first reception, no friends there except for those in the wedding, night party for friends. Only their parents stayed for both. Different music, different food, different alcohol.

What? that's weird.

It's extremely rude.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of my daughter's close friends had a massive party and a handful of girls slept over. It wasn't weird or rude at all. None of the girls discussed it and the kids who slept over had been really good friends for years mixed in with many newer friends from a brand new school.

+1

This is common in my boys circle. They are surprisingly discreet and don't tell others. Parents sneak in overnight gear.

We've been on both sides.

Maybe there's less "mean girl" type stuff amongst boys--but never hard feelings. Hug group of friends with smaller closer subsets.

We’ve done this, but only with 1-2 kids sleeping over. We also were discrete about hiding the sleeping bags. But almost half the party sleeping over is too much in my opinion.

Anonymous wrote:Definitely will cause hurt feelings. I just invited my daughter to have one friend (of the 24) on her team yesterday doesn the night and apparently it caused a ton of drama. Then again, my daughter hangs out with a bunch of drama queens

That's truly ridiculous. Your daughter should be able to invite a friend from her team to sleepover. I'm sure the other girls do it.

Anonymous wrote:All those saying is rude, do you ever get surprised that somebody who you think was a friend turned out to be not a friend . Where your kids surprised? They were not friends, they were polite

Is this a direct quote from "Mean Girls"?

Anonymous wrote:It is not rude, it's super okay.

And then you can invite 2 out of 3 to Orlando next morning and 1 out of 2 to enter a park there. Inside the park, only your daughter will eat lunch while the other girl watches. Such a cool birthday. It's a Reality Show Birthday and your daughter, of course, will be the winner! She eliminates some guests every phase. Go for it!

One of the parties we had (11yo) could have been a good start:
- invited everyone in the grade, no limit, lasted around 4 hours;
- small group (around 15) went to the pool (close friends and kids whose parents didn't come);
- smaller group came home (around 10);
- 5 slept over;
- 2 went for their birthday tradition thing next day.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some say your daughter will be inviting people to her wedding but saying she doesn't have room for them to attend the reception afterwards that is only for "real" guests.

There are plenty of weddings with specific rules who attends what. I loved the one my friend did: a.m. ceremony for everyone (Catholic), a bus to load all the relatives to the first reception, no friends there except for those in the wedding, night party for friends. Only their parents stayed for both. Different music, different food, different alcohol.

"Plenty?" Uh-huh. So what about the group that wasn't invited to either reception? How did they feel? Because if everyone was invited to one or the other, it's not the same thing.

Why do people care so much who gets invited and where? Are you really friends with all those people? I can care less if I get invited to a pare-parry, party or post-party. I would only go to select events anyway with people who want to see me.
Until this thread I didn't know that post party sleepovers that didn't include everyone were not common or normal. When kids were around 7-8, they started planning their post-party sleepovers, knowing well that parents would allow 3-4 kids max. Some parents will get extra kids after the party for a sleepover that will be happening in parallel.

Because tweenage girls are such super amazing secret keepers, and never, ever have relationship dramas. COME ON, OP, you know perfectly well that: 1.there is a 0% percent chance this stays a secret. 2. There is a 100% chance there will be hurt feelings. And that even if the moms of the left out girls are too polite to saying anything, they will resent your daughter for being a snot and you for allowing it. And 3. Dividing guests into the first and second string is incredibly rude.

Does DCUM really need to tell you this?

Have the party, and let your daughter have a seerate and indecent sleepover unrelated to her birthdays for her besties. A Halloween sleepover, or a Holiday sleepover, or a thank goodness we have a teacher who day sleepover.

This isn't hard. Is it?

No wonder there are so many "mean girls" in middle school. Mean girl moms or moms who can't stand up to their kid and tell them they have to do the right thing.

Anonymous wrote:It is not rude, it's super okay.

And then you can invite 2 out of 3 to Orlando next morning and 1 out of 2 to enter a park there. Inside the park, only your daughter will eat lunch while the other girl watches. Such a cool birthday. It's a Reality Show Birthday and your daughter, of course, will be the winner! She eliminates some guests every phase. Go for it!

This is a good idea - the Reality Show theme!

Another solution would be to have a raffle at the party. The prize would be to stay for the sleepover. Obviously, nobody needs to know but the raffle is fixed beforehand. Just tell your DD and her BFFs to act surprised when they get awarded the golden ticket! If your husband is not a good actor, like mine, just don't tell him the truth. And pretend it was a huge coincidence to get exactly all her BFFs.

Anonymous wrote:All those saying is rude, do you ever get surprised that somebody who you think was a friend turned out to be not a friend . Where your kids surprised? They were not friends, they were polite

Polite is good. Rude is bad. Friends is a totally different question.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of my daughter's close friends had a massive party and a handful of girls slept over. It wasn't weird or rude at all. None of the girls discussed it and the kids who slept over had been really good friends for years mixed in with many newer friends from a brand new school.

+1

This is common in my boys circle. They are surprisingly discreet and don't tell others. Parents sneak in overnight gear.

We've been on both sides.

Maybe there's less "mean girl" type stuff amongst boys--but never hard feelings. Hug group of friends with smaller closer subsets.

How do you know there are never hard feelings? Boys have feelings too, a lot of them learn young to hide their pain.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some say your daughter will be inviting people to her wedding but saying she doesn't have room for them to attend the reception afterwards that is only for "real" guests.

There are plenty of weddings with specific rules who attends what. I loved the one my friend did: a.m. ceremony for everyone (Catholic), a bus to load all the relatives to the first reception, no friends there except for those in the wedding, night party for friends. Only their parents stayed for both. Different music, different food, different alcohol.

"Plenty?" Uh-huh. So what about the group that wasn't invited to either reception? How did they feel? Because if everyone was invited to one or the other, it's not the same thing.